10 ways technology will change travel by 2020

IT WAS 2006. I was a freshman. Facebook was huge. Full-length movies streamed instantly to my computer. My cell phone took 1.2 MP pictures.

In other words, technology had never been more advanced.

And that’s just it: by any measurement, we’re constantly living within the most advanced technological era of all time. Yet by the long list of aspirational technologies you’re about to read, you’d never know it.

To an outsider, it must seem like 21st-century humans believe they’re always living a decade or three in the past, and that the future and its inevitable entourage of flying cars, teleportation, and other really cool stuff we haven’t even thought about is as much a part of the human narrative as the fireplace, the automobile, and the internet. Because we believe that the future must bring more powerful technologies (and so far, we’ve been right), the future plays as much a role in how we understand ourselves as the past.

Some of these technologies you may have heard of. Others might seem incredibly far-fetched. But the important thing to realize here is that regardless of whether they ever come to fruition, the mere fact that many people around the world believe these things to be inevitable illustrates just how discontent technology makes us with the present — and also how much we long for constant interaction.

2012

Flying cars – Yes, as in cars…that can fly. Okay, while you might not be the one piloting (or even passengering) the flying car, the engineers at Terrafugia have long been busy perfecting their Lightweight Sport Aircraft (LSA) concept and are currently accepting buyers to the tune of $270,000.

Photo: Terrafugia

“The whole idea is to address the gap in travel between 100 and 400 miles,” said Cliff Allen, Terrafugia’s vice president of sales. “You could leave your home or office, drive to the nearest GA [General Aviation] airport, convert over to the aviation mode, fly to the airport nearest your destination and drive the last 10 or 15 miles.”

No word currently on whether you’ll actually be able to drive/fly (I prefer “flive”) your Terrafugia Transition by year’s end, but you can certainly obtain ownership — and odds are good that you’ll be airborne within the next few years.

2013

Speech-to-speech translation – Imagine you’re in India (or, if you are in India, continue being in India). This is a place where foreign languages and dialects are constantly coming together and increasingly demand a translation service. Now imagine that when someone speaks to you in a foreign language, an audio receiver automatically picks up their speech, translates it into your language, and plays it back for you. This is already a reality.

What this means is that within a year or two, you’ll be interacting with foreign languages in an unprecedented way — as puzzles to solve rather than pictures, whole stories to understand. I’m not going to be the one to decide if seamless translation is a good thing…but I do know that no matter how good the technology may be, there will always be that person who has trouble using it.

Superspeed rail more convenient than planes – Planes travel fast. Hundreds of miles per hour. But getting there, checking in, boarding, waiting…I’m not even going to run through it all. Point is: since rail is more efficient, if you could ride an incredibly fast, comfortable train and your door-to-door time was about the same, wouldn’t you prefer it?

That’s about to be what happens when Deustche Bahn completes and begins its service from London to Germany. Currently, you either need to book a flight from England or take a zig-zagging rail route to get to Berlin. Given the amount of business traffic between London and Germany, it’s likely that other large hubs will begin to see rail as the preferred method of mass transportation — just look at what’s coming in year 2020.

2014

Solar flight – Less than 100 years ago, Charles Lindbergh captured the entire world’s imagination like never before when he completed the first non-stop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. In two years, we’ll see the completion of the world’s first circumglobal flight powered by nothing more than energy harnessed from the sun. Will anyone notice?

I doubt it. But what happens if the technology becomes cheaper? What if at some point, you can buy your own solar-powered personal flying machine that will get you a few hundred miles for the cost of a Buick?

2015

Self-charging holographic mobile phones – That’s a mouthful. Let’s simplify: first of all, we have had, for a long time, wristwatches that power themselves by the regular motion of the wearer. Today, cell phone companies are already unveiling kinetic motion-powered cell phones…meaning the scourge of battery life may plague you no more.

So, to recap: charger-free cellphones that project a holographic video of you and the person you’re calling. So what does that mean for travel? Well, let’s say you’re on vacation in Dubai, and your office calls and needs you in a meeting — you won’t go, but your holographic self will. The more we can connect the physical world — even if it’s just a lifelike representation — the less influence geographic boundaries have over us all.

Serious space tourism – The concept of “space tourism” is about as cutting edge as “social networking” these days — we’ve been there, talked about it. But still, we haven’t really seen it aside from Richard Branson’s crazy-billionaire aspirations of taking slightly less wealthy people into space with him.

That’s all definitely going to change, though, because Boeing — an aerospace player who doesn’t mess around — announced that it will bring passenger service into the final frontier beginning 2015.

2016

Augmented reality everything – By the end of this year, Google will begin selling augmented reality glasses that stream information in real time onto a user’s eyeball. Which means that finally, you’ll never have to remove your eyes from your Twitter/reddit/Facebook news feed.

Assuming our appetite for more information, more often, as fast as possible doesn’t start to diminish, we can only expect that our visible realities will inevitably become subject to the changes we choose to make upon them. Probably the biggest proponent of this idea is Ray Kurzweil, who discusses how in the future our entire realities will be created through nanobots that “re-engineer” our perceptions of the world around us by communicating directly with the brain.

2017

The locationless classroom – Some of the younger readers might not fully agree with me here, but it’s true: school is awesome. However, the current model of getting dropped off at a turning circle to “learn” between the hours of 8am and 2pm is probably not the end-all-be-all of scholastic efficiency — especially when you consider that nearly 10% of all highschoolers drop out.

Given our steady progression to locationless communication, it only makes sense that we’ll eventually take our schools into the cloud and digital classrooms will be come, at least in some part, the norm. This already happens in towns like Branson, CO, where the official population is only 100 but 850 children actually attend the local school via the internet.

When you combine this idea with the aforementioned holographic cell phone technology, one can envision a future where going to school involves projecting yourself into a virtual classroom environment to study with your other holographic classmates. I’ll say that’s at least a few years down the road, though…

2018

Biometric and electronically enhanced passports – Perhaps the biggest factor keeping people where they come from is not geography, not nostalgia, nor family, but passports. Human will can overcome nearly any physical obstacle — but no amount of wanting can overcome a denied passport at a political border.

So, what will the passport of the future look like? We’ve already begun incorporating RFID chips and other technology into passports — is biometric data the next logical carrier of our identification? And as human screening becomes replaced by technology, we can expect waiting times at passport controls to become incredibly diminished.

At the same time, though, this may be a slippery slope: no data is invulnerable to hacking and manipulation, and as history has unfortunately shown us, an individual’s biological and physical makeup is often the first to become discriminated against.

Obviously, the main motivation here is safety. It’s the primary difference between cars of today and those of even 10-15 years ago: our cars are immensely more self-aware, and anything that can be done to reduce the more than 30,000+ deaths caused by automobiles (annually in the U.S.) will be a welcome addition to our traveling lifestyle.

Today, this sounds impossible. We have never, ever seen a 36,000km structure — manmade or otherwise. But the same was once true for so much of our world that now seems commonplace: skyscrapers, highways, hydroelectric dams. Truly, the past century and a half of unprecedented technological innovation has done more for our imagination than it has for our productivity. For the more we build and achieve, the more we feel inadequate and strive for what was impossible yesterday, but today seems all but inevitable.

****This post is brought to you in partnership between Matador and our friends at Intel, whose technology enables so much of the lifestyle in which we thrive. Join us in the conversation on Twitter with #IntelAlwaysOn.

I don’t want a car that drives it self. I love to drive. Great article though

Kathleen Amen

The Star Trek Universal Translator! All-right!

Scott

Excellent read as usual Mr. Wire

http://twitter.com/MarioVult Mario Vult

Agree with Angela, I’m not trusting some computer to drive me around

Wei

Do you fly ? Because mostly a plane is flown by a computer…

Shad

very good read Jason

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_WE3JWKWUY2R62UY5JMETECQBHE Dimitri Sokolov

All of these are insignificant improvements. When am I going to be able to fly from NY to Tokyo in 2 hours or less? Jets are flying at the same speeds in 2012 as they did in 1960. WTF?

Dimitri Replyski

Exactly. I am always thinking of speed revolution in air planes

http://www.facebook.com/Redbaron666 Mike E Wells

I like the point you made here, but as long as we cannot help breaking the sound barrier, there will always be opposition to faster air travel. If they could come up with a way to make planes travel faster without breaking the sound barrier, then I would be all for it. I think the best way to travel these long distances without this problem will be to travel out in space to get to your destination. They are already working on this. It is only a matter of time until we see it come to reality.

Adam Wood

Planes are traveling faster than they did in 1960 because their more fuel efficient meaning they can travel further distances non stop for example you used to have to stop in Hawaii when flying from Sydney to Vancouver now this can. Be done as a one way non stop flight

Jrad

It was Princess Leia that came out of R2D2 to ask Obi-Wan for help. Get your lore strait =]

Bebe

@yahoo-WE3JWKWUY2R62UY5JMETECQBHE:disqus
There was Concorde in its prime…3.5 hours New York to Paris. Perhaps it will return one day.

As for the holographic images at school and work, the augmented reality, and the elevator into space…as King Lear raged, O, reason not the need!

http://www.internetsuccess4you.com/ Sally K Witt

Very interesting!

Sandjunkie28

Railway is too susceptible to terrorist attack to replace airplanes. Imagine gaurding 1000’s of miles of railway. Aside from that, the companies that own railways fail to maintain them because the cost of maintenance is far greater than the litigation costs when their rails fail and kill people, thanks to the liability caps that the government has put in place to protect corporations.

Paragu7

DO you think, the world is USA alone … ? There has so many un -development country and slow developing country around the world …., I’d predict these are just for exclusive land only … no hope.

danny

i tell u this some good stuff and its gonna happened

http://twitter.com/Kogstaa Kogster

”
Less than 100 years ago, Charles Lindbergh captured the entire world’s imagination like never before when he completed the first non-stop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris.” This ins’t true. He was the first to complete the trip alone not the first to complete the trip.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_62IW5KKDO56PJJTDLJVMDRYCUA Gene

All very interesting points to ponder. However, regarding the use of superspeed rail being more convenient than planes – I would think that the current ”
But getting there, checking in, boarding, waiting…” at airports would be replaced with a futuristic,
But getting there, checking in, boarding, waiting…” for the superspeed rail stations.

Dimitri Sokolov Dimitri Russia

They already have flying cars, cars that fly in the air and drive on the ground.

genesis

can’t anyone invent an air ionizer for the whole world or a cover that will replace the ozone layer?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FSN4FY7LDNPBLT2K2YITFDZ2DM roadscolar

I absolutely disagree on every point. I don’t want a car that drives itself – I enjoy the experience of driving. Trains are far, far too expensive. A much more likely scenario would be vacuum tube trains (or near vacuum tube trains in which the rarefied air is used to generate lift). Such vehicles would achieve speeds in excess of 8000 mph and cost just a few cents per km per passenger due to almost zero frictional losses. The vehicles would be passive – accelerated by periodic superconductor magnets. As for schools, I am already working hard on an electronic interactive book that would obviate, forever, the need for ANY classroom. I gave it to my Spanish house cleaner and within four weeks her kid used it to learn quadratic equations, differentiation and simple integration. He is eight years old. I could go on, but what’s the point? I know I’m talking to myself…

http://www.tucargadorsolar.com/ Tu Cargador Solar

We will have more technology but the goal and the essence of travelling will be the same!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003075667530 Rishabh Gupta

myyyyyyy goddddd whatttt going to happennnn

http://www.notebooknerds.com/ Cheap Laptops

Crazy… It’s amazing how Computers have allowed all these technological advancements to happen… We live in amazing times!

Ben Mackay

this article misses one major point 2019 is only 7 years away and I will still try to stab anyone who try to take my mini from me, let alone a car that drives itself, I couldn’t imagine a more boring way to travel

I guess the next generation will not run on tyres or rails, it will be something else, carts and the slow speed made us invent cars , jams , pollution and delays will push us even further, travel will be at the speed of light , either teleportation or wormhole drive i believe by 2050 we would shun the cars and wheel would be an invention of the past, today everything revolves on them tommmorow wheels would just beautify the musuems.

Jen

As a translator I have to strongly disagree with the section about 2013 and translation apps. Have these people ever even used Google translate? A machine-based translation will never (or at least not for a long time to come) be able to do what a human can do. And certainly not in politics or the economy.

praveenrastogi

Wow,
its great idea..i love this article..i love travelling for learning new things..thanks for sharing with us..
praveen
mytravelo.com
u may visit now

http://www.globaltowncar.com/ Seattle Airport Transportation

All very exciting factors to consider. However, regarding the use of superspeed track being more practical than planes

https://www.conexiant.net/ wholesale voip telecom

Change is the part of life. Everything will change when the time passed on. I love to see the flying card and speech to speech translation.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002988555576 Saeed Hasrat

the technology advancements that we will be having in future are incredible i love to have all that we desire.

http://www.globaltowncar.com/ Seattle Airport Transportation

what will the ticket of the long run look like? We’ve already started including RFID snacks and other technology into given is fingerprint data the next sensible service provider of our identification?

Armel Villareal

this is great!

Shiva Malhotra

Technology is the fuel for human growth.

Bateria Compulsiva

INCREDIBLE!

Joe Burton

Tech of the future, some already real, some imagined. All cool.

Jasa Evan Sipayung

I took for inform.
thakns

Derek Busam

All this technology and yet we are becoming more and more distant from one another pretty soon people are just going to spend there entire lifes sitting in chairs having machines do everything for them.

Magic Wisdom

this is so cool in 2020 thanks
hope i will see it!!!

http://www.travelcarma.com Jayesh Paul

Amazing !!! great to hear that how technology will turn into 2020, Travel technology comes together to make that
experience easy, rich and faster for travellers. travel technology will improve more faster and easy way, it has been analyzed and observed as a travel technology consultant from TravelCarma

Nick

I don’t think any of that stuff should come out I mean what dosent mankind have today think about it